{"id":3206,"date":"2011-10-10T13:39:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=3206"},"modified":"2011-10-10T13:39:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:39:24","slug":"qa-with-mg-siegler-from-blogger-to-vc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/10\/10\/qa-with-mg-siegler-from-blogger-to-vc\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 “Q&A with MG Siegler: From blogger to VC”"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN Fortune:<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m happy for MG on his transition from Blogger to VC. It’s a huge step and one that we all could see coming. Aside from the TechCrunch mess of this summer, I always saw MG one day taking a Gruber approach and, the more I followed his Tumblr, the more easy it was to see him one day being a lone ranger, taking Parislemon full time and making that his job and filling up his time with speaking gigs, some consulting and analyzing our industry. It’s nice that he’s ending up somewhere already populated with friends that he has worked with and trusts. This quote is something I’d like to review briefly:<\/p>\n

\n

I’ve gotten very good at filtering. At TechCrunch, we would see hundreds of pitches a day — we could not do them all. We had to choose the best. Everyone has their own ways of doing that, but generally I would use my network to both vouch for certain entrepreneurs or just see what startups my friends were talking about.<\/p>\n

In terms of what I may have to “relearn”, I guess I’d say the difference between a “hot” company and a “good” company. That is to say, the difference between a company that will make for a good story, versus one that will make for a good business. I’m not too worried about that distinction, but it is something I’ve thought about.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This may be the one thing about blogging in general that bothers me. Journalists are guilty of this as well because even Walt Mossberg was friends with Steve Jobs. I’m a fan of MG’s writing but, the fine line that we all have is that friendships do influence what we say. I’ve been keeping a running count of the amount of times Marco Arment, Shawn Blanc and John Gruber link to each other or link to blogs that use the ad service The Deck. There’s an argument that bloggers who use The Deck for ads are high quality blogs with a similar demographic but there’s also an argument that bloggers who use The Deck link to other blogs using the same ad host because there’s some unspoken agreement. What a claim! I’m not saying it’s true but it’s something I notice a lot.<\/p>\n

Back to MG, I know he has integrity and I know what he writes has been criticized mostly by anonymous haters but he also knows a lot of people in tech and often has a friend at a company he writes about and that leads to undisclosed things but really why disclose if a friend works somewhere? Why disclose that you are friends with the CTO of Pandora, post photos at his wedding and then rave about their new redesign on TechCrunch? You don’t have to disclose that but maybe he should. I’m not an ethics enforcer when it comes to disclosure but I think using your network to vouch for certain entrepreneurs is difficult because a large network means you find out about new companies but, when it’s your friends who are starting those companies, you may need to disclose that.<\/p>\n

This post from Arrington becomes more real every year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CNN Fortune: I’m happy for MG on his transition from Blogger to VC. It’s a huge step and…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-linked","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-PI","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3154,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/10\/05\/mg-siegler-paull-carr-and-michael-arrington-all-a-part-of-crunchfund\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 MG Siegler, Paull Carr and Michael Arrington…all a part of CrunchFund","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"October 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"MG Siegler: Enough with burying the lede: yes, I\u2019m becoming a VC. I couldn\u2019t be happier to announce that\u00a0I\u2019m joining CrunchFund\u00a0as a general partner. It\u2019s my honor to join\u00a0Mikeand\u00a0Pat\u00a0in that role. And I thank them for the opportunity. So Arrington leaves TechCrunch to start CrunchFund and gets investment from AOL\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3357,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/12\/15\/horseshit\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 “Horseshit”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"December 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 It gets under my skin because it is a pompous, privileged, insulting, and myopic viewpoint which reeks of class warfare \u2014 and it is indicative of a growing sentiment I see amongst people in the tech community. \u00a0 And... it's a shitty way to think about other people. 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It\u2019s called Soylent and while there\u2019s only a trace amount of soy in the powder, the tech world is sort of blowing up in what\u2019s a 50\/50 split of fans and foes to this new liquid diet. I just ordered 28 days worth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Culinary"","block_context":{"text":"Culinary","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/culinary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7443,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2018\/05\/21\/screwing-your-vocal-minority-500ish-words\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":4},"title":"Screwing Your Vocal Minority \u2013 500ish Words","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"May 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Screwing Your Vocal Minority \u2013 500ish Words: All of this is to say, it\u2019s fucking insane that Twitter has killed their native Mac client not once, but twice. I don\u2019t care if it only had a hundred thousand users, a thousand users, or a hundred users, it\u2019s the abandonment of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2747,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/07\/20\/apple-killed-the-cd-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 “Apple Killed The CD Today”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"MG Siegler back in 2010: When you get your MacBook Air and you open the box, you will find exactly\u00a0zero\u00a0optical discs inside. Normally, Apple includes at least one back-up DVD to reinstall OS X and other software if your computer fails. But now, that has been replaced with a super-slim\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}